


Every Day

by Anisky



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Croque Monsieur, Determined Rey, F/M, Goal-Oriented Rey, Rey's not a stalker just ask her!, and WOW does she have her priorities straight!, sad Ben Solo, sharing food
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-11 22:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15981869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anisky/pseuds/Anisky
Summary: Every day, Rey goes to Takodana Brews to study, and every day, Rey sees a tall, dark-haired man sitting at the table in the far back corner. She can’t help noticing how sad he always seems, and she wonders what he would look like with a smile, but she doesn’t even know his name.It goes on like this until one day a random accident gives her the chance she’s been waiting for. Rey Jakku is going to find out what Ben Solo’s face looks like with a smile on it if it’s the last thing she does.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wanderingminds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingminds/gifts).



> This fic was created for The Writing Den's House Swolo Fanfiction exchange, for [wanderingminds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingminds/pseuds/wanderingminds). Happy Sextember 2018, Swolo rules!!
> 
> Prompt: Rey goes to a coffee shop everyday after class and Ben's always there in the back corner sitting alone and he always orders the same thing, she tried it and it’s delicious and he looks so sad.

Rey didn’t mean to be a stalker, she really didn’t. 

No, let her rephrase that: Rey _wasn’t_ a stalker.

It didn’t mean anything that she knew which table the large, dark-haired, sad-looking man always sat at, alone, in the back corner of Takodana Brews; he was there every day, just like she was, already sitting there when she arrived at the coffee shop after her last class. Anyone would notice that the same person was sitting in the same place every single day for two months. 

That she also knew that every day he ordered the Croque Monsieur, slowly eating half of it over the course of an hour, and then got the other half wrapped up to go, didn’t mean anything, either. She just happened to glance at the back corner one day, and it had looked so good, so she’d decided to order it. The ham and cheese sandwich was smothered in gruyere on the outside of the fresh baked bread as well as on the inside, and then fried in butter. It had to be one of the most delicious things Rey had ever eaten, and one of the fattiest-- no wonder he only ate half at a time. 

With such a memorable meal, it was only natural that she’d note the fact that every time she saw him, he had that same cheese-smothered sandwich in front of him. It was a natural consequence of remembering how mouthwatering those Croque Monsieurs were! 

And anyone, Rey would point out if such a thing had ever come up in conversation, would notice such big, sad eyes. 

Especially on such a striking face. 

Anyone would wonder what it would look like to see his eyes crinkle in a smile, after seeing someone look so downtrodden day after day. 

She definitely didn’t obsess over him. Thinking about him sometimes when she was at home, wondering who he was, why he was so sad, and why he was chugging so much coffee at 7pm after Rey got out of her labs… 

Well obviously she didn’t do that because that would probably be weird, and nobody else could claim that she was doing that because nobody could see inside of her mind. So there. 

Rey continued to be not at all a stalker but merely an observant person who never spoke to the man she observed for nearly two months, until one Monday in early November.

On that Monday, her Fluid Dynamics Lab (referred to by students by its unfortunate but appropriate initials FML) let out early due to a freshman in an Intro to Chemistry lab somehow managing to cause a reaction that flooded the entire first floor of Ahch-To Hall with some kind of noxious gas that may or may not have been dangerous. Everyone had been evacuated, just in case. So it was only a few minutes after 5 o’clock when Rey strolled into Takodana Brews for her evening caffeine fix and to get a head start on her problem sets for the week.

She was actually too distracted by remembering the revolting smell to glance oh-so-casually over at the corner table like she usually did when she entered the coffee shop. It was only after she’d gotten in line that she began to ponder whether the lab incident counted as a terrible enough experience to justify ordering the Croque Monsieur in order to make her feel better. Then, of course, she glanced over at the corner table.

It was empty. 

Rey was so startled that she missed it the first time when the barista asked for her order, and had to be asked again before she snapped out of it and asked for black tea with milk and a Croque Monsieur. 

Then, with a shrug, she headed over to the back corner table. It was empty, after all. And maybe she was a little curious about the view from there-- after all, she’d never gotten a chance to sit there, as it had always been taken. 

It was cozy back there. Rey could see the whole coffee shop, and yet she felt pleasantly secluded (though intellectually she knew, of course, that she was all too visible). The lighting was just right for homework, too, and soon Rey was happily plugging away at her problem set for Fluid Dynamics, barely noticing when the barista came over to place Rey’s tea and cheese-smothered fried sandwich on the table. 

About half an hour later, Rey suddenly found her light blocked, and her notebook and texts fell dark beneath a shadow. Rey looked up, surprised; her light hadn’t been affected when the barista had come by…

Oh. 

Oh, of course. 

Standing there, glaring down at Rey, was the Large Dark Sad Man-- except that right now he looked less Sad and more Mad. She’d guessed that he was tall but wow, did he really tower over her, especially while she was seated.

“You’re in my seat,” he grumbled. 

“I’m what?” Rey asked innocently, trying to sound as confused as she would be if she had no idea that this man had ever sat at this table. “I don’t see your name on it.” 

Rey suddenly wanted to check the top and side of the table for some kind of plaque, because this seemed like the sort of embarrassing moment that she might realize that it did indeed have his name on it. She resisted the urge. 

“I _always_ sit here,” the man said darkly. “You know that.” 

Rey could have sworn that her heart skipped a beat. A knot began to form in her stomach. She’d thought she’d been so subtle! Had he really noticed Rey staring at him all this time? 

“Why do you think I’d know that?” she managed to choke out. 

To her surprise, the man shuffled his feet side to side, suddenly looking slightly unsure. 

“You’re here every single evening,” he said, accusingly. “You never noticed that I always sit here?” 

“I mean, I-- if that’s true, I’m sure I must have seen you over here at some point or other, but…” Rey trailed off, as the implication of his words hit her. “Wait, do you memorize everyone who comes in every day, or what?” 

The man’s face turned pink as he looked almost bashful for the barest moment. The expression was gone before Rey could even be sure he’d made it, and he put his hands on his hips and glared down at her menacingly. 

“Get out of my seat,” he said. 

“I like this seat,” Rey said stubbornly. “It’s cozy and the light is just right when you aren’t standing above me.” 

She looked down at the sandwich in front of her, and remembered how curious she was to see him smile. She looked back up at the man and gave him her sunniest smile. 

“But if you want, you can join me at this table. There’s plenty of room. We can share my Croque Monsieur, if you want-- it’s really too rich for one person to eat all at once.” 

He stared at her. 

“What?” Rey asked, suddenly self-conscious. “Do I have something on my face? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You want me to join you?” the man asked in a strangled tone. 

“Yeah, why not? I’m Rey, by the way.” Rey stuck out her hand. She knew there was a good chance that he would leave her hanging, but something in her had to try. 

To her mild surprise, he slowly reached out his hand to shake hers. “Ben,” he said. 

“Well, Ben, would you like to take a seat?” Rey asked, gesturing at the chair across from her with a hint of theatricality. 

“Um… sure,” said Ben, sliding into the chair on the other side of the table. Rey smiled at him. 

Ben stood up again, and Rey looked at him in confusion, trying not to feel hurt. 

“I just realized I already ordered the same thing that you have here,” Ben explained. “If-- I mean, you were serious in your offer to share, I should probably go let them know to cancel my order. But if you don’t want to share--” 

Rey nodded quickly. “I was serious.” 

“Okay then. I’ll, uh. Go let them know then. And then I’ll come back.” 

“Sounds good,” Rey told him, grinning. 

“Okay,” Ben said again. He stood there another moment, as though he wasn’t sure how to make his feet work, before he turned around and headed over to the checkout line. 

Rey leaned back and chewed distractedly on the eraser of her pencil as she studied Ben from the back. She’d never seen him from behind before. He looked really good from this angle. Very nice butt. 

But she was thinking about his behavior just as much as she was admiring his backside. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. At first he’d seemed angry, but when met with friendliness, his behavior was more suggestive of being painfully shy. 

The Croque Monsieur was already cut in half, so Rey picked up one half and took a small bite before placing it back on the plate a little ways away from the other half. Before he returned, she slid the plate to the center of the table. 

Rey looked down at the first problem of her problem set, half-completed, and idly pretended to be working on it while watching Ben from the corner of her eye as he stalked back to the table and sat down. She looked up at him when he did and smiled again. 

“So do you come here to get work done?” Rey asked. “I have plenty of homework, so I can just sit here deriving velocity distributions and liquid viscosity equations and I won’t make a peep, I promise.” 

Ben blinked at her, looking confused about something, but eventually he nodded. “Uh, yeah. I like to come here to get some work done away from my office. So, yeah, if you don’t mind if I just pull out my laptop…” 

“Of course not,” Rey said brightly, gesturing down at her textbook and notebook. 

They were silent for half an hour or so when Rey finally finished the first problem and stood up to stretch. Her unexpected movement caused Ben to look up, so Rey knew she could speak to him without interrupting anything. 

“I see why you always sit here,” Rey said, as she hooked her her hands behind her back and leaning forward. “It’s the best table in the place. I’m gonna miss it after tonight, since it will never be free!” 

She reached both arms up in the air to stretch them as well. As she did, her sweater climbed up and exposed a small sliver of her navel. 

Ben swallowed heavily and Rey noticed that his eyes seemed to go right to the strip of skin that was showing. She tried not to feel smug as she dropped her arms and sat back down again. 

“Well, you could always try getting here before I do again,” suggested Ben. 

Rey sighed and shook her head. “Sadly I can’t. I’m in Engineering in my junior year and I have labs three nights a week, if you can believe it, and a clinic tutorial on Thursday evening on top of that. There’s no way for me to get here much before seven. I’m afraid you have the advantage.” 

Ben cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “you’re not a bad table partner. If you want, you could come over here and sit with me, even if I arrive first.” 

Rey lit up. “Really?” she asked. 

Ben raised his eyebrows. “Wow, you really like this table, huh?”

She blushed. Whoops. A little too much enthusiasm there. 

Rey shrugged, trying to play it off casually. “It’s a good table.” She picked up her cheese-smothered sandwich to take another bite, and couldn’t help letting out a small moan. It was _so_ good.

Ben looked uncomfortable. He adjusted the collar of his shirt and cleared his throat. 

“These are actually my favorite,” Ben told her, after a pause. “I get them every time.” 

“They’re delicious,” Rey agreed. “I can’t usually afford them, though. I buy tea so that they’ll let me sit here to do my homework-- and for the caffeine of course-- and that’s super cheap. Something like this--” She waved her Croque Monsieur around-- “is an occasional indulgence. Mostly I’m on the ramen-and-huge-tubs-of-yogurt diet.” 

Ben looked alarmed. “And here I am eating half of your occasional indulgence? Please, let me pay for it.” 

“It’s fine,” Rey said. “I’d already gotten it when you came by, remember?” 

“No, I couldn’t, please,” he said, digging his wallet out of his pocket. 

“Tell you what,” Rey said. “When I come and sit here tomorrow, you save half of your sandwich for me, and then we’ll be even. Deal?” 

Ben didn’t look happy about it, but then, he never looked happy. 

_Yet_ , Rey thought. They’d met for real now, and she’d even gotten an in to spend more time with him-- maybe even every day if she played her cards right. His offer was open ended; he hadn’t put any kind of limit on how often she was welcome, or for how long his offer stood. As long as she managed not to irritate him she could keep spending time with him indefinitely. 

Rey leaned back, immensely satisfied with how the day had turned out. Maybe she should buy that poor bumbling freshman a fruit basket or something-- her mistake had given Rey the chance she’d been wanting for months. 

She didn’t care how long it took-- Rey Jakku was going to see what Ben looked like with a smile on his face. 

Or die trying.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than I intended, but the ending place was just too perfect. On the other hand, the chapter count just went up! Whoops? 
> 
> This is for the lovely [wanderingminds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingminds/pseuds/wanderingminds). Thanks also to all the lovely Swollettes, and everyone in The Writing Den! 
> 
> Swolo Rules, and Happy Sextember!

When Rey got to Takodana Brews the next day, Ben was sitting at his usual table, but in the seat across from his usual one-- the seat he’d been sitting in yesterday, when it was the two of them. His plate was in the center of the table, with the half nearer to him half-eaten, and the other half pushed clearly to the other side of the plate. 

It seemed that he hadn’t changed his mind about letting her sit with him again today. Rey smiled at that. 

After she ordered and retrieved her customary tea, Rey made her way to the back corner and sat down as quietly as she could, pulling out her notebook and texts and putting them gently on the table. 

“What, no hello?” Ben asked. 

Rey jumped about a foot in the air. She’d been so focused on staying quiet that she hadn’t been expecting him to speak. 

“Hi Ben!” she said. “Sorry, I was trying to be quiet. I thought you probably wanted me to be as unobtrusive as possible, since I am kind of invading your space.”

“You’re not invading. I told you that you were welcome to sit here.” 

“Yeah, but I thought maybe you were just saying that to be nice.” 

Ben scoffed. “If I say something’s okay with me, I mean it. I never do anything just to be nice. Honestly, I’m _not_ nice.” 

“That’s not true.” Rey picked up the half of the Croque Monsieur that was towards her end of the table. “This is for me, right?”

“Yes…” Ben said slowly, not understanding her point. 

“So you’re letting me have it just to be nice,” Rey said. She couldn’t resist a quiet moan-- she never could, when eating the delectable cheese-smothered sandwich, but she felt a little more self-conscious about it now that she wasn’t sitting alone. She kept her eyes down, a little embarrassed to see whether Ben had noticed. She decided to just keep talking to put the moment behind her. “I really appreciate it, too. I’m starving. I didn’t get a chance to grab lunch so the last time I ate was 8 this morning when I had some Cheerios.” 

“No,” he said, “you gave me half of your sandwich yesterday, so this is simply my repaying a debt.” 

Rey took another bite and closed her eyes in bliss. “Uh-uh.” She shook her head ‘no.’ “I gave it to you freely, there was no debt. You were under no obligation to return the gesture. Nothing bad would have happened if you hadn’t returned the gesture. Ergo, you gave it to me just to be nice.” 

He looked like he didn’t know what to say to that. 

“Plus,” Rey continued, warming to the subject, “you let me sit with you, even though you’re accustomed to being alone, just because I said how much I liked this table. That’s something you’re doing, just to be nice. Therefore, you _are_ nice.” 

“Well, if I am, you’re the first person ever to say so,” Ben answered dryly. 

“Well, why not? Anything that happens has to have a first time. Hey, _and_ you even sat on the other side from where you usually do, just so that I can have not only the table but the _seat_ that I prefer. How is that possibly not a nice thing to do?” 

It wasn’t a smile, but Rey was seriously starting to enjoy watching Ben blush. He was so pale, his whole face turned pink so very obviously. 

“I wasn’t very nice when I first saw you sitting here,” he said. Rey wasn’t sure but she thought he sounded a bit regretful. 

“Yeah, well, I’d interrupted your routine. And you’ve made up for it since then.” She paused. How much teasing was too much? She should probably lay off, but seeing that face turn so pink… and besides, Rey was deathly curious if he’d been noticing her anywhere near as much as she had him. 

“Speaking of when you first came up,” she said, “you never did answer me. How did you know that I come here every evening?” 

Ooooh, _that_ caused his face, which had started to fade from the the last blush, to turn even redder. 

“Well?” Rey prompted, when it became obvious that Ben wasn’t likely to answer any time soon. 

“I just noticed you, that’s all,” he mumbled. “You come here alone and you’re working so hard but you just seemed… cheerful. Bright. Like a…” He stumbled over his words for a moment. “Like a bit of sunshine.” 

“You were about to say ‘ray of sunshine’, weren’t you?” Rey grinned at him. So he _had_ been noticing her. In what sounded like a really positive way, too. 

“I stopped myself,” Ben said indignantly, and Rey laughed. 

“So what you’re telling me is that for the past who-knows-how-long, you’ve been skulking in the corner here, never speaking to me but _watching_ me, as I work and drink my tea, every day? You know there’s a word for people who do that, right?” She grinned and winked at him, to take away any of the sting from her words. 

Ben stared at her. “Wait a second, are you calling me a _stalker_?” 

“Well, if the shoe fits…” Rey trailed off and looked at him mischievously. 

He stared open-mouthed at her for a moment, and then gave a little half-laugh, his lips turning up and his eyes crinkling in a smile. 

And oh, what a smile it was. It took Rey’s breath away. 

“What is it?” Ben asked, when the girl across from him seemed to be staring at him. “Do I have something, or--”

Rey shook her head. “No, no. You just… you have a really nice smile. I’ve just been wondering what it would look like for months now.” 

Ben turned red from the tips of his ears and down across his cheeks. Then he narrowed his eyes. 

“Wait a second,” he said. “You said you didn’t notice me sitting back here. How could you have been wondering about my smile for months?” 

It was Rey’s turn to blush. 

“And now that I think about it, I can buy that you guessed that I’m used to being alone when I come in here-- my offering to let you sit here does suggest that I don’t expect there to be anyone else sitting with me. But if you never noticed me before yesterday, how would you know which side of the table I like to sit on?”

“Um…” Oh, shit. _Busted._

“So you _have_ noticed that I sit here every day,” Ben declared. 

She blushed a little harder. 

“Why did you say you never noticed me?” he demanded. 

“Well, because I didn’t want you to think _I_ was a stalker!” 

Ben full-on laughed at that, and it was so glorious that Rey couldn’t help but join in. 

“I guess both of us have been stalking each other,” said Ben, wiping the tears from his laughter away. 

“I think that makes it okay?” Rey said in a tiny voice. 

“I didn’t like thinking you’d never even noticed me in all this time,” Ben admitted. “So yeah. It’s more than okay.” 

“You always looked so sad,” Rey told him. “I always wondered why.” 

Ben sighed and looked down at his hands. “Have you ever felt completely alone even though you’re surrounded by people?” 

Rey thought back to her foster homes, the chaotic ones with tons of other foster children running around, the quiet ones where everyone who lived there was family except for her. 

“Yes, I have,” she said. “Most of my life, actually. Mostly I’ve always been alone.” 

“You’re not alone now,” Ben said, looking into her eyes. 

“Neither are you,” Rey said. 

She wasn’t sure which of them reached forward first-- maybe it was both of them-- but the next thing Rey knew, they were touching hands across the table. Her hand where it touched Ben’s tingled, felt almost electric, in a way she’d never experienced before.

Ben’s intake of breath at the contact gave Rey a bit of extra courage, and she turned her hand over so that they were holding hands, dropping them an inch so they were resting on the table. 

Something in his liquid brown eyes, somehow both warmer and darker than they had been before, took her breath away. 

Well, Rey had managed to discover what Ben looked like when he smiled. While she intended to see his face lit up in a smile plenty more times, she decided, as her hand tingled beneath his and her eyes darted between his eyes and his lips, that she wanted to set a new goal. 

Next mission: Rey Jakku was going to find out what Ben’s O-face looked like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the lovely comments, they really make my day!


End file.
